Elections Alberta verifies signatures for petition calling for independence referendum

Elections Alberta says it has verified that a citizen initiative petition looking to force a vote on the province separating from Canada was able to surpass the number of signatures it required.

But the future of the petition remains on hold, Elections Alberta said in a news release on Friday afternoon.

The verification process was conducted between July 6 and July 23, and has now been completed, the non-partisan office said.

Gordon McClure, the province’s chief electoral officer, determined that while requirements have been met, any further steps in the citizen initiative process are stayed pending direction from the Court of Appeal of Alberta.

Stay Free Alberta, the group behind the petition, previously said almost 302,000 signatures had been collected, far more than the nearly 178,000 needed under provincial legislation.

Elections Alberta said the total number of valid signatures counted was 279,337 and using random statistical sampling, the office said it found 222,597 verified signatures.

Elections Alberta said the most frequent reasons signatures were rejected during the validation phase included incomplete addresses, electors not completing their declarations that they were eligible electors, canvassers signing their witness declarations before electors signed the petition, and electors providing a mailing address instead of the required physical residential address.

The petition was submitted in early May, but just two weeks later, a Court of King’s Bench ruling quashed it. The judge ruled McClure made an error in law to approve the second citizen initiative petition and failed to consider an earlier court decision that said separation would violate Indigenous people’s treaty rights. Both the Alberta government and Stay Free Alberta have appealed the judge’s ruling.  

But last month, Stay Free Alberta earned a partial win in court when another judge ruled the signature verification process could take place while the original ruling is appealed. In that decision, the judge stopped short of allowing those results to be reported to the justice minister and then referred to the lieutenant governor, which could trigger a constitutional referendum. 

Premier Danielle Smith has called a referendum for Oct. 19, when Albertans will be asked a number of questions, including if they want to remain in Canada or start the process of having a second, binding vote on separation.

Smith has said interest in the Stay Free Alberta and pro-Confederation Forever Canadian petitions was a factor in her decision to add a question about Alberta’s place in Canada to October’s referendum ballot.

No seeded names found 

Following an unrelated alleged breach of voter data in late April, McClure ordered the verification process for citizen initiative petitions to include an additional step that involves looking for what he calls seeded names. 

Elections Alberta said it believes the voter data, which was allegedly leaked by a third-party advertiser, came from an official voter list legitimately obtained by the pro-independence Republican Party of Alberta. The office said each such list is seeded with multiple fictitious names to make the documents easier to trace in the event of a breach, but how the list managed to change hands remains unclear. 

In its news release about the Stay Free Alberta petition on Friday, Elections Alberta said it “screened the petition and has confirmed that none of the signatures submitted came from the seeded names on the Republican Party of Alberta’s list of electors.”

The Republican Party of Alberta has told CBC News it is co-operating with Elections Alberta’s investigation into the breach.